


It's All Fun and Games...

by faithfulpenelope



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 05:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8520775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithfulpenelope/pseuds/faithfulpenelope
Summary: ...until someone loses an eye. Or their dignity.The senior staff goes paintballing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> T rating for cursing. Lots of cursing.

It is, surprisingly, not Jim’s idea, but Chekov’s.

It’s a standard provisioning stop, but the supply ship that meets them at Starbase Concord is carrying the wrong size condensing coils for Engineering. Kirk floats the idea of shipping out anyway, getting them at the next stop, and has the distinctly unpleasant pleasure of watching Scotty turn damn near purple with rage.

“Never mind!” he yelps out as Scotty draws in a deep breath. “Never mind! We’ll wait.”

So, unexpectedly, they are left with some extra time on their hands to explore. Chekov finds the paintball arena on the second day, and he is so damned excited when he tells them all about that they can’t help but be excited too. Even Bones seems vaguely amused by it.

Jim shelves his glee just long enough to eye him suspiciously. “Don’t look at me like that,” Bones says without turning his head. “We all need to let off a little steam now and then.”

They all show up in varying forms of camo gear, Sulu in full BDUs, which makes Jim laugh and Bones mumble something about _the other weird shit y’all must have in your closets._ Scotty shows up with his own weapon.

“Modified it myself,” he says proudly, hefting the gun up onto his shoulder. The arena attendant takes one look at and confiscates it, holding it gingerly as he locks it away in the back room and Scotty huffs.

They agree to individual play, since any way they break up the teams seems to leave someone with an unfair advantage. Spock's gaze drifts discretely as he says this, and Bones rolls his eyes.

"Just say it. You're talking about me."

"You are the only one of us who does not actively participate in combat -"

"Yeah, because I'm too busy keeping you yahoos alive."

" - and you participate in only the most required refreshers," Spock finishes. "It is only logical that you would not have the same tactical ability."

"Sure," McCoy says evenly, but in his eyes he’s clearly plotting a long list of vaccinations for when they get done. "Logical."

“You got two hours out there. Three shots to anywhere on the body or a single kill-shot to the chest, those are the rules,” the attendant explains when he returns. “Dead players will be transported immediately to the appropriate holding center”. He points to a sad anteroom just past the sign-in area. The sign above the doors reads _Den of Losers_.

“Okay, then,” Uhura says.

“You can comm individually or everyone all at once, and your wrist displays will give you everyone’s stats. Shake them to update.” He grabs Spock’s wrist and gives it a wiggle. Spock just blinks before drawing his arm away.

“Now,” Jim says as they stand at the starting line, waiting for the countdown clock to start play, “what’s important here is that we all have fun, and remember that we are, first and foremost, crewmates –”

"Yeah, yeah, crewmates, innocent fun,” Scotty interrupts, cocking his gun. “You’re all going down!”

“Not it we get you first,” Sulu whoops, and Chekov cackles.

“Well, shit, then.” Jim unholsters his gun. “See you on the flip side, suckers!”

xxxxxxx

At first, nothing much happens.

They are, after all, highly trained in tactical attack strategies, and after the first fifteen minutes of nothingness, Kirk starts to wonder if he’s trained his crew too well for this to be any fun. Then the first burst of sound cuts through the quiet air and a kill-shot alarm shrieks alive. Kirk flips on his all-call comm, ready to ask who the loser is – well, ready to get yelled at by Bones – when a particularly harsh-sounding round of Klingon curse words pours into his earpiece.

He blinks, surprised, then pulls his collar up over his mouth to speak. “Uhura? Really?” Uhura’s response is swift and furious and makes Jim glad he’s not entirely up to date on his Klingon. “Who got you?”

“No idea,” she spits across the comm. Kirk waits but no one steps in to claim their shot. “Whoever it is, they’re going to _pay_. They got me right in the heart.”

 _Impressive_ , Jim thinks, and sinks a little deeper into his cover.

xxxxxxx

After that, it goes down _much_ faster.

Sulu spots Chekov moving through the forest but the kid is so damned fast he can’t get a drop on him. What he does get a drop on is Scotty, who’s also trying to track the ensign. He delivers two shots, one right after another, but Scotty drops under the third shot and it splats against a tree truck instead.

Chekov dimly hears Scotty’s cry as he stops to line up a shot at Spock. Scotty, having recovered, pops up over a hedge and tags him once before he can fire, then ducks away as Chekov spins, gun held high.

Spock arches an eyebrow and silently melds into the tree line.

Kirk sneaks up from behind, tags Spock once before Sulu gets him in the leg, sends him twisting for cover, but not before getting a hit back on Sulu. Then Chekov appears out of nowhere, and with a half-sheepish, half-evil shrug tags his bridge mate.

“Traitor,” Sulu hisses. Chekov just grins.

Then two shots hit him hard in the back – from where, Sulu has no idea, but whoever it was, he loves them – and Chekov yelps as he goes face-first into a bush. The pilot cackles.

“They got karma in Russia, Chekov?”

xxxxxxx

Ensconced safely in a tight hollow – not that he’s hiding, but _damn_ , where the hell had Sulu come from? – Kirk lays down his gun and checks the display on his wrist. Uhura and Chekov are blanked out. Scotty and Sulu have suffered two hits each, Spock one, and Bones –

He pauses. Shakes his wrist so the display will update. Smacks it when it doesn’t.

It beeps indignantly and flashes the same information.

Bones has no hits.

“Uhura,” he hisses into his comm. “Uhura. Have you seen Bones?”

“Have I – seriously? I know he’s no solider but he’s a grown man, Kirk. You think he can’t take care of himself?”

“Just – what does your display say for him?”

Uhura sighs into the comm line. “It says he – oh. Wait.” He hears her confer with Chekov before coming back on line. “It says he hasn’t been hit yet.”

"Huh. Thanks. Kirk out.” He terminates the link, glances around before flipping open the comm again. “Spock. Come in, Spock.”

“I am currently otherwise engaged, Captain,” comes Spock’s reply, and there’s a roar of angry Scotsman in the background before Scotty’s name blanks out on Jim’s display. _So it is working_. A crinkling sound catches Jim’s ear and he terminates the comm link, grabs his gun. It can’t be Spock – he’d have heard him outside the comm – so it’s Bones or Sulu. Then an even voice fills the air.

“I know you’re around, Captain,” Sulu says, calm as always. “I heard you comming Spock.”

Jim hunches low, slinks away from the sound of his voice. “It’s not nice to eavesdrop,” he tosses over his right shoulder, then twists left, ducking behind a thick tree.

“Wasn’t trying to,” comes the response. There’s a quick spike of sound and Kirk gets his gun up just in time to come face to face with Sulu’s. “But your voice does tend to carry.”

“Can’t help it,” he says casually. “It’s just my natural authority.” Sulu snickers but his gun doesn’t waver.

“Sure,” he deadpans. “So we seem to have found ourselves in a bit of a stand-off.”

“So we have.” In the near distance there’s a gunshot and their displays flash in unison to show _Spock_ has been hit.

 _But if Sulu's right here_ –

"If you’re here, then who just hit Spock?” Sulu asks, and Jim’s eyes go wide just as the air whistles low and a paintball hits Sulu smack in between the shoulder blades.

"I think we may have made a serious tactical mistake,” he says, and drops low, the second shot skimming tight past his shoulder.

“I would have to agree,” Sulu says over the blare of his alarm. “God speed, Captain. I think you’re going to need it.”

“Shit,” Jim hisses as he sparkles away, “shit, shit, shit.” He smacks the comm line open. “Spock, you there?”

“Captain, I believe we may have severely underestimated the Doctor’s abilities,” Spock says immediately, and Jim huffs.

“It appears so, Spock. And now he’s _pissed_.”

A deep chuckle fills the line, somehow very familiar and completely foreign at the same time, and Jim freezes, realizes he’s hit the all-call comm by accident. “Bones?” he says weakly.

“I hear you been checkin’ up on me, Jim,” comes McCoy’s response, his drawl heavy and low. Jim blinks, dumbfounded. “Ain’t that sweet, you lookin’ out for your poor doctor friend who obviously can’t defend himself from you big, bad soldiers.”

There’s a soft murmuring of Russian over the line, and a hum of agreement from Uhura. Spock is conspicuously silent.

“Leonard,” Scotty says, and there’s an obvious relief in his voice that he’s safe, even if it’s in the Den of Losers, “I believe I speak for all of us when I say, _what. the. fuck._ ”

Bones chuckles again, and the chill it sends down his spine is enough to send Jim scampering for the cover of the wide tree behind him. “Well, Mr. Scott, here’s what you have to understand. Sometimes stereotypes, they’re stereotypes for a reason.”

Scotty just dumbs out, “huh?”

“My great-granddaddy Leonard, he was the ultimate Southern stereotype,” Bones says, his voice easy and conversational, like they’re all sitting around the lounge, sipping cocktails. “Had a farm he worked every day of his life. Every day, he was up at dawn in his work shirt and boots, tending to his animals and crops. Only break he ever took was Sundays, when he put on his nice work shirt and cleaner boots and let Great-Grandma Mary drag him to church for an hour. Then it was back out to the fields. That was his life: his farm and Great-Grandma Mary. And one other thing. Hunting.”

There’s a long pause. Jim silently curses himself for not paying better attention when Bones got drunk and started telling stories. “I believe I may know how this story pertains to us,” Spock states finally, and McCoy laughs.

“Now, Great-Granddaddy Leonard didn’t expect future generations to have the same devotion to farming that he had. He understood when they left. But they weren’t gettin’ away without at least _experiencing_ the farm life. So when a McCoy turned twelve – any McCoy – they got sent to live with Great-Granddaddy for the summer, and he taught them to farm and care for the animals. And the first cool night, he’d hand them a rifle – a good old fashion Winchester bold-action hunting rifle; Great-Granddaddy didn’t believe in none of this fancy technology like phasers – and a thermos of tea and tell them they were providin’ dinner for the following evening, and until they came home with something, nobody was eatin’.”

"He wasn’t serious,” Sulu says flatly. “You aren’t serious.”

"As a heart-attack,” McCoy confirms. “And if you’re wonderin’ if anyone ever tested him, the answer is yes. My Uncle Ray, it started raining while he got out there. He lasted six more hours before he came limpin’ home. You wanna know what Great-Granddaddy did?”

“No,” Chekov whines, “not really.”

“He sat Uncle Ray down right in front of my great-grandma – who, by the way, was damn near eighty at the time – and said, “Now tell Miss Mary why you think she should go hungry tonight.” Ray turned right back around, spent another ten hours out there before he drug home a turkey.”

Uhura mumbles something that sounds like _damn hillbillies_. Jim pinches the bridge of his nose, breathes deep.

“Now, I didn’t mind the farm work so much; I knew even back then I was gonna be a doctor and taking care of animals wasn’t so different from taking care of people. But the hunting, I’m sure none of you would be surprised to know I wasn’t so fond of that. So I taught myself to be good at it, how to take an animal out as quickly and painlessly as possible. And when Great-Granddaddy sent me out, I made sure the first thing I did was get high –”

 _OH_. Suddenly it all makes sense to Jim, where all those random shots were coming from, and he turns a frantic eye to the tree line.

“ – and get quiet and just let…the animals…come to me.”

There’s a brief pause and Bones exhales and –

Spock’s kill-shot alarm wails out through the trees.

“Damn,” Uhura breathes over the line. “Kirk, you are _fucked_.”

“Mommy,” Jim squeaks in response.

“Well-played, Doctor,” Spock says flatly, and sparkles away.

“Brought home a wild boar in just under two hours,” McCoy continues, a hint of pride in his voice.

“Have I told you lately how you are my very best friend?” Jim tries weakly, burrowing down lower against the tree.

“Oh, I know, but Jim, you would know all this –”

Kirk smacks his forehead with an open palm.

“ – if you had paid attention to me instead of constantly cruising the bar for your next conquest.”

Scotty coughs, a strange noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. Chekov doesn’t even try to hide his snickering.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Kirk negotiates. “We call a truce, and we never underestimate your tactical abilities again. I’ll even throw in that bottle of Maker’s Mark I’ve been hiding in my quarters.”

McCoy snorts. “I’d suggest you check that hidden bottle when we get back,” he retorts mercilessly, and Kirk squawks in offense. “No, I say we settle this the old-fashioned way. Two men enter, one man leaves.” There’s a pause and Kirk can see the satisfied smirk that must be spread across McCoy’s face. “Unless you’re scared, _Captain_.”

"Oh, _fuck that_ ,” Kirk barks out as a wave of low murmurs from the rest of the crew floats out across the comm. The shock’s worn off and now he’s just _pissed_ that he’s been taken. If Bones thinks because Jim’s going to go easy on them because they’re friends, then he’s sorely mistaken. “You are on, _Lieutenant Commander_."

“Oh, snap,” Sulu hisses. “Anyone got a body bag ready?”

“Kirk _out_ ,” he commands, and gets ready to battle.

xxxxxxx

It’s a blood bath. Well, a _paint_ bath.

Now that he knows he can go high – how he didn’t notice the blinds before, he doesn’t know, and he kicks himself for going easy on his crew – he scrambles up and takes stock. Through the trees he can see great swaths of the arena and it becomes obvious how Bones was able to take shots when they were so wide apart. He gets down low, lays still, and then he sees it, a flash of movement across the tree line, and he grins, because there that bastard is.

He considers climbing down and ambushing Bones in his blind but the chances of him making it up there without getting shot are too high. But if he can force Bones off his blind, there’s a good chance he can nail him on the ladder coming down. He lines up his shot, takes a deep breath, and fires, twice in rapid succession. There’s a guttural cry and his wrist display flashes two bright red lights by McCoy’s name. “Gotcha,” he cackles lowly, then retreats back down before McCoy can fire back. He watches the ladder at the base of McCoy’s blind for movement and it comes, not from McCoy climbing down but swinging, and before Jim can get off a shot, Bones has landed on the soft dirt with a grunt and rolled out of sight.

 _Jesus. All these years he’s bitching at me for being reckless and it turns out I got fucking Tarzan for a best friend,_ Jim thinks sourly, and crouches low, keeping along the tree line. There’s a meadow up ahead, wide and open, and he wouldn’t even consider crossing it except there’s a high blind visible on the other side, it’s height making it virtually impenetrable. He’s considering the logistics when McCoy pops up.

He stands, takes aim.

The paintball knocks into his arm, sending his shot up into the leaves, and then McCoy’s gone, and he realizes the meadow isn’t flat but filled with trenches. McCoy had _baited_ him.

 _Motherfucker_.

He can’t let McCoy get to that blind – _not McCoy_ , he tells himself, _the enemy combatant_ \- so he takes off in a run, figuring a combination of the tree line and his speed will keep him protecting. Paintballs spray behind him – McCoy’s machine-gunning him at this point – but he stays low and quick and then he’s past the meadow and behind a large rock. From here he can see McCoy’s trapped himself in his trench; there’s no way out but to cross the meadow. 

When McCoy finally emerges it’s with a spray of paintballs. The curvature of the rock makes for poor coverage and forces Jim to get low and respond in kind, his shots wide and unfocused. His display tells him nothing has hit, and he swears. He slips to his left, finds another little hollow. He has to shimmy in but the mouth is wide and low enough that he can see everything but behind him. But he’s in between the blind and McCoy now. He can stand to wait.

For a long while it’s just silent.

Then there’s a rustle to his left. He slides the gun over, making sure to keep the gun just above the dirt. A boot comes into view, then a knee, as McCoy crouches low and scans. Jim grins. Moves his finger over to the trigger and –

Everything around him powers down.

“What?” He howls, slams his hands against the dirt, furious. McCoy swears and drops back out of sight. “What? _No! I had him!”_

“Sorry, dude.” The attendant’s voice is unapologetic over the comm line. “Two hours is up.”

“ _No. NO!_ ”

“Yes,” the attendant says blandly. “Yes.”

“ _MotherFUCKER!_ ” Jim hauls himself out of the hollow, barely resists the urge to try and brig the guy.

"Sorry, kid.” Bones appears in front of him. He’s covered in dirt, Jim’s twin hits bright orange against his left side. “Guess we’re going to have to call it a draw, after all.”

"This is _bullshit_ ,” Jim protests. “I _had you_.”

Bones scoffs. “I guess we’ll never know, will we,” he says, and Jim narrows his eyes.

“No – you don’t get to act all calm now,” he hisses, and levels his gun. McCoy’s eyes go wide.

"You wouldn’t dare,” he breathes, his own gun at the ready now.

Jim just laughs.

xxxxxxx

“ – and that’s how we got banned from the paintball arena on Starbase Concord,” Jim finishes with a _what can you do_ shrug.

On the comm screen, Pike pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes deep.

“Jim.”

"Personally, I think it was an overreaction. Bones told them he could treat himself for the paint in his eye and my… _unfortunate_ bruising. They’re the ones that insisted on reporting it to the starbase medbay.”

" _Jim_.”

“I mean, they had to have knojwn about the previous safety violations. Close-range blowback has to be a common problem and googles are cheap. We were just, you know, the final straw.”

"As you so often are,” Pike grits out, and Jim grins. He at least has the decency to do it sheepishly.

“Was there something else you needed to discuss?”

“Your condensing coils,” Pike says, and Jim has to think for a minute before remembering, _oh, right, those_ , “are on their way. Do you think you and your crew can manage to stay out of trouble for two more days?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Kirk swears. Pike glares.

"Kirk – “

“No, really, sir, we’ll be good. We’ll keep ourselves nice and busy with the race track Sulu found a few hours ago.”

“What - Jim , no –”

“Kirk out!”


End file.
